light, examined, no common thread of ancestry to be uncovered. ‘I’m not sure this is the post for you.’
‘It is.’
A pause, during which he tapped his pen against his tooth. Then a look, just the barest hint of raised eyebrow. ‘It’s only part-time.’ The pen tapped on my application. ‘You strike me as someone who wants something more.’ He spread his hands on the desk. ‘It’s community college ...’.
‘I’m aware of that. It’s fine.’ I’d just had years of study, of undergraduates’ essays, of battling for funding. I’d have taken anything. I simply wanted to stay in New York.
Isaac was older. Mid forties. I was raw, clutching my PhD to me, half afraid it would be taken away. I was a fraud, a stealer of degrees. It had been too easy. I’d heeded the warnings about the years that would accumulate as I struggled with my dissertation, but I finished in less time than anticipated. My supervisor advised me to keep the thesis from taking over my life, but that was what I wanted, craved. A permanent distraction. Something that would loom larger than my dead brother, that would fill the spaces inside me that I poured drinks into whenever I could. I lived for those all-nighters, the weekends locked in the library, the deadlines, the chapters. I researched enough for two courses, yet still I finished a year earlier than planned. I barely breathed during term time, and it suited me perfectly. I bypassed drinking in favour of my research, let the poets I wrote about take Andrew’s place in my priorities.
‘Well, we need someone, and you’re ready to start, so let’s give it a shot.’ His first smile threw me. My nerves steadied.
His real job, I was to learn, was chair of English at NYU. When I worked with him there, everything changed.
Affairs with work colleagues are too damn tricky, and someone always loses.
My new books in a paper bag, I take the long way home, avoiding the pub. I think of the bottle of wine in the kitchen, the red lozenge it will create in the bottom of my glass. It waits for me.
CHAPTER 9
T he house draws me in. I am a fly, caught in its sticky threads. Being there without my mother is still strange. September has dissolved into October, and autumn is mellow now, resisting the pull of colder weather. The trees have turned, and conker shells scatter themselves along the footpaths. Now when I run I crunch leaves underfoot, let them disperse in the slipstream of my pounding feet. Still the hot spell throbs, funnelling colour into the city, lighting it.
My mother’s things need to be sorted, and I can’t bear the thought of it. Maude offers every day, and I should just let her. My idea of sorting involves inviting someone from the nearest charity shop over, presenting them with black bags and letting them take the lot. Her personal effects, correspondence and whatever else she squirreled away I will just burn. Her letters are in folders, marked with dates. I thumb them. Her organisation floors me. They’re filed in order of date with the envelope stapled to the top. I push through them. Who has time for this sort of thing? Why wasn’t she mothering me instead of stapling envelopes to letters? Where was the care of her daughter, the attention to detail there? It was always the same, the cold eye cast in the other direction of anything I might have been doing. Even my drinking. Especially my drinking. Secretive as I was, she had to have suspected something. Easier to ignore it. Something I have asked myself frequently in my life, the question that will never be answered: what did she blame me for? What, if anything, did I do? It seems self-pitying now, but I ask without seeking answers. My mother had her reasons, whatever they were, stretching years back into my childhood. She never liked me. Drinking eased the gap she left in my life, but it never really filled it. My mother’s meanness to me as a child petered out eventually, ran its course like a river through desert
‘It is.’
A pause, during which he tapped his pen against his tooth. Then a look, just the barest hint of raised eyebrow. ‘It’s only part-time.’ The pen tapped on my application. ‘You strike me as someone who wants something more.’ He spread his hands on the desk. ‘It’s community college ...’.
‘I’m aware of that. It’s fine.’ I’d just had years of study, of undergraduates’ essays, of battling for funding. I’d have taken anything. I simply wanted to stay in New York.
Isaac was older. Mid forties. I was raw, clutching my PhD to me, half afraid it would be taken away. I was a fraud, a stealer of degrees. It had been too easy. I’d heeded the warnings about the years that would accumulate as I struggled with my dissertation, but I finished in less time than anticipated. My supervisor advised me to keep the thesis from taking over my life, but that was what I wanted, craved. A permanent distraction. Something that would loom larger than my dead brother, that would fill the spaces inside me that I poured drinks into whenever I could. I lived for those all-nighters, the weekends locked in the library, the deadlines, the chapters. I researched enough for two courses, yet still I finished a year earlier than planned. I barely breathed during term time, and it suited me perfectly. I bypassed drinking in favour of my research, let the poets I wrote about take Andrew’s place in my priorities.
‘Well, we need someone, and you’re ready to start, so let’s give it a shot.’ His first smile threw me. My nerves steadied.
His real job, I was to learn, was chair of English at NYU. When I worked with him there, everything changed.
Affairs with work colleagues are too damn tricky, and someone always loses.
My new books in a paper bag, I take the long way home, avoiding the pub. I think of the bottle of wine in the kitchen, the red lozenge it will create in the bottom of my glass. It waits for me.
CHAPTER 9
T he house draws me in. I am a fly, caught in its sticky threads. Being there without my mother is still strange. September has dissolved into October, and autumn is mellow now, resisting the pull of colder weather. The trees have turned, and conker shells scatter themselves along the footpaths. Now when I run I crunch leaves underfoot, let them disperse in the slipstream of my pounding feet. Still the hot spell throbs, funnelling colour into the city, lighting it.
My mother’s things need to be sorted, and I can’t bear the thought of it. Maude offers every day, and I should just let her. My idea of sorting involves inviting someone from the nearest charity shop over, presenting them with black bags and letting them take the lot. Her personal effects, correspondence and whatever else she squirreled away I will just burn. Her letters are in folders, marked with dates. I thumb them. Her organisation floors me. They’re filed in order of date with the envelope stapled to the top. I push through them. Who has time for this sort of thing? Why wasn’t she mothering me instead of stapling envelopes to letters? Where was the care of her daughter, the attention to detail there? It was always the same, the cold eye cast in the other direction of anything I might have been doing. Even my drinking. Especially my drinking. Secretive as I was, she had to have suspected something. Easier to ignore it. Something I have asked myself frequently in my life, the question that will never be answered: what did she blame me for? What, if anything, did I do? It seems self-pitying now, but I ask without seeking answers. My mother had her reasons, whatever they were, stretching years back into my childhood. She never liked me. Drinking eased the gap she left in my life, but it never really filled it. My mother’s meanness to me as a child petered out eventually, ran its course like a river through desert
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